Here’s a major thing. Film Atlas is an online encyclopedia of film formats. Launched to the public last month, it is a collaboration between the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) and the George Eastman Museum, with funding from the Louis B. Mayer Foundation, the George Eastman Museum Publishing Trust Endowment, and FIAF (Eileen Bowser Memorial Fund). Film Atlas is a richly-illustrated directory of all of the forms in which film as a physical medium has existed – or rather, that’s the goal, since there have been a huge number of such formats (at least 650, they say), and they have launched with 125 of them. More will be added as the years ago by, with the planned end goal being 2032. What to know all about Dufaycolor, Sonochrome, IMAX, Disney 3-D, Vivaphone, Minirama, Labyrinth or Zoechrome? This is the place to be.
Film Atlas is a specialist resource, because the one thing that the general public has seldom seen, or much cared about, is how the film they are experiencing is formed. Some will know in general terms that films came in different sizes, but of perforations, bases, emulsions, frame rates or aspect ratios few will know or worry. But the archivists care, and some scholars care, and it is for them that Film Atlas is primarily designed.
Each entry in Film Atlas follows the same pattern. The format is named, a date range given, and a line or two summarises the nature of the format. This is followed by outline descriptors: use, principal inventors, related companies, locations of production, countries of use and the format categories into which it fits. There is a map of the world showing those locations where production was centred and the countries of use (the latter could do with some definition, but there is no legend accompanying the maps to say what they signify). We move on to the nitty gritty of film formats with Film Explorer, which combines close-up images of one or more examples of the format with an identification panel that gives you gauge, frame dimensions, aspect ratio, perforation type, frame advancement, emulsion, edge markings, support, frame rate, number of projected frame strips, colour details (for colour formats), and regular screen credits.
This is all good stuff for the archivists. What follows is what is most likely to interest the general viewer. There is a historical essay on the rise and fall of the medium, followed by illustrations. A select filmography lists the most notable titles made using the format (up to ten, but some formats only ever resulted in the one film – Kinesigraph, for instance). A technology section is another feature for the experts, though the technology informs the history just as the history informs the technology. More illustrations can follow, sometimes with video clips. Things are rounded by by a list of references, a list of relevant patents, and a guide to how the formats links with others on Film Atlas. Finally there’s a short biographical profile of the person who put all this together.
I was one of those persons. My contribution – so far – is Kinemacolor, which the site summaries as ‘additive two-colour process invented in the United Kingdom and exhibited across the world. The first commercially and technically successful motion picture natural colour process’. Two others that I have written, on Kinekrom and the Spirograph (all three came from the same producer, Charles Urban), will appear on the site in due course. I can vouch for the extraordinary dedication and attention to detail of site editors James Layton, Crystal Kui and Margaux Chalançon, who asked all the right questions. Some invisible expert reviewers also helped, and it was fun trying to guess who they might be – the world of historical film formats is quite a small one.
One of the most pleasurable things about Film Atlas is the page of contributors. This is a long gallery of all of those who have contributed entries to Film Atlas, each one with a photograph (quite an accomplishment by the editors to get everyone to volunteer for this) which links to their mini-biography. The latter are full of interest in themselves, but just scrolling through the gallery is a joy. Faces young and well-worn, quite a few of them friends and colleagues over the years, but many in the early stages of their careers, with an optimistic look that gives you such hope for the future care of the medium. It’s a parade of good hope.
The directory of formats is the main part of Film Atlas, available via an ‘explore’ function which allows you to search by word, category, year range, region and use. But, aside from the parade of contributors, there are curated highlights from guest contributors, a Most-Wanted list of formats not covered as yet for which the editors are looking for any expert contributors out there (come on, someone somewhere has got to know about Hollaman-Eaves Sound Films of 1898), and an About page.
Film Atlas is a tremendous achievement, but also something of an anomaly. Time was, two decades ago, when databases were all the rage in the arts and humanities sector. The internet had opened up such opportunities for extending access, and the digital world soaked up and joined up things in such a satisfactory way. There were research grants to enable you to put these things together, and such was the enthusiasm that no one thought much about the dread word, sustainability. How were these things to last, once the research funds ran out? Well, we argued, the virtue of the thing is argument enough in itself, and users are bound to be as enthusiastic about what we have created as we were in creating it. There will always be someone to care. The money will be found.
Alas, time has proved us wrong. So many of the small but worthy databases produced during that exciting time have either disappeared, or sit mouldering in a neglected corner of some platform, never updated, progressively slipping out of date. I was involved in the production of several film-related databases in those heady days. Three have gone, two survive, though I sometimes feel they are hanging by a thread. It only needs a new manager to look at their digital inheritance and ask, what is this doing here? who still uses it? and with a flick of the switch all is gone (databases are not able to be preserved by sites such as the Internet Archive). Film Atlas has been handsomely funded and has some major institutions behind it. One assumes that it will survive, with some resource made available for keeping the site looking fresh and the entries updated where needed, after 2032. We need such hopes.
One thing seems fairly certain, though – that there have been a finite number of film formats produced, so Film Atlas is not fated to be open-ended. The age of physical film is over, bar some niche products that may crop up from time to time. Film is history. Fortunately we have all those bright young faces for whom care of the past is what helps make the present meaningful. Thank you to all of them, and good luck.
Links:
- Two of the databases that have disappeared have web pages saying that they are ‘currently undergoing maintenance’ and might return one day: the Moving Image Gateway and the Researcher’s Guide to Screen Heritage (previously called Researcher’s Guide Online). I wouldn’t hold out much hope for the former, a directory of moving image-related websites, of which there are now too many. But the latter – a directory of UK moving image and sound collections – really ought to be sustained somehow.
- The link for the third, The London Project, no longer works. I do get questions about this site, a database of London cinemas and film businesses to 1914. All I can say is that there are hopes that it may reappear, but more hopes than certainties. Other databases have had their content absorbed by other online resources, which is fine.
- The two databases that survive are News on Screen, on British newsreels and cinemagazines, and the International Database of Shakespeare on Film, Television and Radio (though it’s just called Shakespeare these days). Use them!
